On January 24,
1848, James Wilson Marshall was inspecting work on a
sawmill being built for John Sutter on the American River
near the present town of Coloma when he saw gold flakes
on the ground. He spent several minutes picking up all
the flakes he could find and then went about his business
as if nothing was out of the ordinary. The next morning,
Marshall scooped up another three ounces of flakes and,
after confirming to himself that he had indeed found
gold, immediately made his way to Sutter's home. The two
men cleaned off the flakes, weighed them, and, using
every test they could think of, determined that they were
23-carat gold.

When news of the find first reached San Francisco, it
was met with disbelief. It wasn't until entrepreneur Sam
Brannan marched through town with a vial of gold as proof
that people began taking the discovery seriously. By
mid-June, most of the male population of San Francisco
had abandoned their homes and jobs in favor of seeking
gold, and Brannan had sold $36,000 worth of supplies to
wanna-be miners. Military Governor Colonel Richard B.
Mason toured the gold fields and sent a report detailing
amazing finds, along with a tin of gold, to Washington,
but that report would not be read for several months.

From San Francisco, word of the gold find spread
throughout the rest of California, and then up and down
the west coast, across the Pacific, and into South
America. By the fall of 1848, thousands of people from
the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), Oregon, Mexico, Chile,
Peru and China had joined the Californians in the gold
fields.

East Coast newspapers first published accounts of gold
in California in mid-summer 1848, but skeptical editors
tended to downplay the stories. It wasn't until President
James Polk read Mason's report as part of his December 5,
1848 State of the Union Address that Easterners became
believers. Suddenly thousands of Easterners (mostly men)
were borrowing money, mortgaging land, and/or using their
life savings to make their way to California in hopes of
striking it rich.

By the spring of 1849, the non-native population of
California had grown to almost 100,000 people, the vast
majority of whom were looking for gold. Some panned for
gold along streams and creeks, a back-breaking and
time-consuming process that more often than not resulted
in just enough gold to keep the 49er's hopes alive but
not enough to make him rich. Those who could afford it,
however, preferred to stake out a larger claim and invest
in sluices and screens. While still a labor-intensive
process, this method tended to be more profitable, and
many of these miners actually made a very good living;
some even actually got rich. By the end of 1849, about
$10 million worth of gold had been recovered from
California fields. Another $41 million was recovered in
1850, and that amount had grown to $81 million by 1852.

panning for gold

Easterners working a gold field

The surface gold ran out rather quickly, and by the
mid-1850's most of California's gold was being mined by
companies with the resources to literally dig for it and
many of the 49ers had become employees of those companies
rather than individual prospectors. By 1857, the annual
gold recovery in California had levelled off at about $45
million.

The discovery of silver in Nevada in 1859 brought an
end to the California Gold Rush. By the time it ended,
both San Francisco and Sacramento had grown into major
cities, while dozens of other towns had sprouted up
around the gold fields, prospered briefly, and then
become ghost towns. While some 49ers actually got rich,
the vast majority of them never realized their dreams.
Most who had made the trip chose to stay, however, and
the unique blend of populations that California is known
for today can be directly traced to the Gold Rush years.

Ironically, neither James Marshall nor John Sutter
ever prospered from the Gold Rush. Although Sutter did
sell supplies to miners, the losses he incurred as a
result of his lands being overrun by prospectors were
never offset by the profits he gained as a merchant.
Marshall was never able to stake a claim following his
initial discovery and spent most of the gold rush years
wandering aimlessly from one gold field to another. He
died penniless and alone in a shack not far from the site
of the find that had started the rush.